


Heartbeat

by ironwoodsfairy



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 17:48:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21982459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironwoodsfairy/pseuds/ironwoodsfairy
Summary: In her mind's eye, she saw blurring shades of blue and black, felt the bone-deep chant of long-dead men, and heard two hearts finally beating as one along the thick hiss of lightsabers.But now she saw only darkness, plumes of it whispering beneath her eyelids and licking at her skin, felt only an empty ache somewhere deep below the pain blooming through what was left of her body, heard only one shuddering heart, weak and afraid.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	Heartbeat

The darkness was warm. Its tendrils wrapped silently around her aching limbs, between her battered fingers, climbed the bruised ladder of her ribs. Her body was buoyant, nearing weightlessness, and Rey could only sigh in the comfort of touch and total submission. She was tired, so very tired, and her thoughts were agonizingly slow. 

In her mind's eye, she saw blurring shades of blue and black, felt the bone-deep chant of long-dead men, and heard two hearts finally beating as one along the thick hiss of lightsabers. 

But now she saw only darkness, plumes of it whispering beneath her eyelids and licking at her skin, felt only an empty ache somewhere deep below the pain blooming through what was left of her body, heard only one shuddering heart, weak and afraid. 

One heartbeat. She was existing in this world of swirling black matter, wherever the Force had brought her, which meant… _stars_ _no no NO!_

Rey thought she felt herself quake, a shift in her body that had no direction and no boundaries where it succumbed to eternity, but the sensation was overcome as the ache in her soul widened, deepened. The dyad was shattered, unhinged, somehow devoid of its other half. _Her_ half. 

_He’s mine, he’s mine, he turned to the Light give him BACK!_

Her thoughts grew from a whisper to a shout, racing faster and faster as her distress rose. The tendrils that caressed the plane of her abused torso shuddered, their smoky trails pushing against an unseen force before pulling back entirely into the depths of darkness, but she paid them no mind. 

Her friends would live. Through the cracks in the sky created by the Force, she’d seen to that. The monstrous fleet had crumbled before her very eyes like dust and falling stars, but so had he.

Another quake began somewhere in her body, but her senses were leaving her, sinking away into the warm sea that surrounded her consciousness as she was left with only a gaping, gnawing hollow. 

She would have begun to cry, had her body been capable of such an act in this world that was swallowing her whole. Pity was an emotion she’d never granted herself in the past, well aware as she was of the path it cleared for darkness, but now… now none of it mattered. She’d felt the dyad, felt herself fulfilled in a way nothing and no one else ever achieved, and now it was taken from her. Rage, grief, and terror ran rings around her mind even as she slipped further and further into the peaceful dark. Her friends would live, and now she could join him, the man she’d been seemingly inexplicably drawn to despite believing him to be a monster, who was in fact the other half of her very being, a half held within a boy split in two and nearly swallowed by a chasm. But here, finally, she could rest, they could all rest…

Splinters of blue and grey crackled above her consciousness, or perhaps below it, but she felt no fear. She’d made her peace and prepared herself to go wherever the Force guided her next, a place she hoped was beyond this world of in between and into that final sleep, away from the throbbing agony of the waking world where she’d be left as only half of a dual-sided coin, and no light to guide her home.

The colors prodded at her mind and twisted between her lips, reaching their own spindly fingers down her throat, digging deeper and deeper as they filled the very core of what she remembered her body to be. They hummed, anchored to the root of her, and pulled.

Direction was long lost to her, and yet the colors carried her through the darkness that ebbed against the splintering light. She heard a rush that coalesced from the nothing that held something, and began to cling to it out of a shiver of instinctual fear as the boundaries of her consciousness blurred. With a sigh, she let go, and released herself from the dark warmth of the in between.

A gentle pressure on her abdomen caught her unaware, its heat dulling the ache underneath as the edges of her body abruptly returned. Her mind, anchored once more within the confines of her head, was dazed, shaken by the definitive somethingness of the world around her. 

_No, please, I quit, take me forward, I don’t want to go back, not without him, please…_

Three things happened, each realization startling her more than the one before. First, she noticed the same pressure cradling her back as was on her abdomen. Second, she found the boundaries of her hand and raised it to push away whatever evil creature had found her. Third, she heard the beating of a second heart. 

Her eyes flew open as dim blue light revealed a blurred shadow of white and black. Even through the uncertain shapes, she was granted a sense of direction again, and the shadow slowly helped her up.

Her vision sharpened, and all breathe she’d been offered fled her body once more. 

“ _Ben_.”

His face was strained by competing emotions of grief, fear, and relief as tears ran down his cheeks. Sweat plastered his hair to his face, and she reached up to push it back. His eyes fluttered at her touch, but he kept them on hers, unwilling to have her out of his sight, if only for a moment. 

Rey felt her heart skip at the sight, at the sensation of wholeness that filled her once more as she lowered her hand and cradled his face. She could feel him there, not only with her, surrounding her, but within her as his presence, his _very existence_ , electrified her senses. They were alive, and they were together, and in this moment, that was all that mattered.

They crashed into one another, finally, _finally_ melding together, as they were always meant to be, in a moment that carried the weight of both the beginning and the end of all things. Ben Solo was half of her soul, no matter how small Ben became or how large Kylo grew at the urging of the Dark that became nearly every voice he had ever heard within his head. Ben had always been there, calling out to her. Now, he’d won, and stepped into the Light as Rey’s equal, a dyad balanced in full.

When she pulled back, his eyes were wide with shock before they crinkled softly and his gentle smile quickly grew into a full, toothy grin. She returned the same smile as his arms circled around her and he lay his head on her shoulder, weakened further by resurrecting her.

They were silent for a time, holding one another as they basked in the glow of having the other there and alive and truly equal, even if not particularly well. Rey felt her own body’s pain, as well as the ghost of his through the Force, as she knew he felt hers. 

Rey was quiet when she spoke into his neck. “I thought you were dead.”

He pulled back, holding her face gently in his hands. “I wasn’t.”

She suppressed a shiver. “I heard only one heart. When you returned to the Light, I finally heard both, but suddenly one was gone and it- it terrified me,” she said, hiccuping over the words as a knot formed in her throat.

He laid his forehead on hers and caressed her cheeks with his thumbs, smearing what tears she had begun to shed. “I only heard one, too. But it was my heart you heard, Rey. It was mine. You were dead, but not gone.” More tears slipped down his own face. “I was coming for you. I always will.”

Rey couldn’t stop herself from kissing him once, twice, thrice more, their bond flaring gently at every touch. In this temple, she felt their past die, as all things must, but she hoped their past would bring forth a new world - a world of understanding, of compassion, of belonging, of balance, and of redemption.

When she looked again into his eyes, crinkled by a grin she prayed she’d remember until the day she left this world for good, they shone like the night sky, like the stars finally guiding her home.


End file.
